Originally Posted by
RadioGod
Humans and animals both are the same. We are animals. Watch the news for 10 minutes and it's obvious.
I know this for certain- when I die, my body will be burnt or dissolved. Either way, it will take on a form I would not recognize as myself. Likewise, even my body now is made up entirely of elements from breathing, eating, and drinking, none of which are myself until they have contributed to my form. Some people think I will return to the earth when I die, but actually, I am not separated from it now. Stop eating, drinking, and breathing for awhile and experience reality directly. Animals are no different.
The distinctions we try to make is consciousness, or a "soul", and being able to have feelings and perceptions of right and wrong.
Consciousness could simply be the perception we are taught from birth. There is a "self" and a world outside that self. No distinction exists in reality. It is a complete fabrication of our mind. We were probably meant to grow beyond such a crude perception of being separated from reality. Much like that one person we all probably know who is 40 and still acts like they are in high school, worried about what others are wearing, trying to be cool, and to fit in. When we see it plainly, we realize we are not separate from anything. Consciousness based on a wholly egotistical perspective is more like a mental illness. And animals have consciousness. They are aware of their self and surroundings just like we are.
We have feelings, or emotions. We have classified them as pleasant and unpleasant. Animals have emotions too. And they are pleasant and unpleasant for them also.
We have established morality amongst ourselves. But this is no surprise. Once we start living in a non-egotistical world, we start to see things through other's eyes. This makes us want to treat others like we would want to be treated. Our system of law and justice is based on this morality. Animals have this too. They are hierarchical, with a societal structure that can only come from morality. Different animals have, by nature, different morality, and thus, different social structures. But so do human beings from different cultures and environments.
I would say there is only one difference between animals and humans, and it is based on a book created by the Early Catholic church at the behest of a Roman emperor who sought to become the bridge between his citizens and God, and control the gates to "heaven" based on how obedient the citizens were to his authority.
And the question of where do animals go when they die? That is based upon the supposition that there is anything called "death". As I laid out earlier, I am made up of entirely non-self elements. All of these elements together make my body. These elements have been in this universe for a very long time. They have been in many forms. They constantly leave my form and take up others. They were here billions of years before my form, and will remain for billions more after my form seems to vanish. Nothing is ever destroyed or eliminated from the universe. Nothing just "vanishes". Likewise, nothing is ever just "created" out of nothing. Things are created out of other things. Death is not real, it is a mental concept we have to explain a change of forms. Likewise, birth is only a mental construct. Everything I am has existed before the universe came to be. I have not come from anywhere specific, nor will I go anywhere.
The people of the present are easy to spot all around us. Can you also see the people from the remote past and future around you right now?
If there is no birth and death, then there is no heaven and hell. And if that is true, then both people and animals go to the same place when they die. Ironically, it's the same place we are when we're alive.